Randomized Isoflurane and Sevoflurane Comparison in Cardiac Surgery

Anesthesia practice in the 21st century is increasingly outcomes-oriented and evidence-based, but there remain significant gaps in our knowledge, even for commonly-encountered clinical situations. Currently, the two most commonly used drugs used for maintenance of anesthesia in cardiac surgical patients are isoflurane and sevoflurane. There is a belief among many cardiac anesthesiologists that sevoflurane is a better cardiac anesthetic than isoflurane, but there is very little data to support this notion. In fact, very little is known about their comparative effects on important patient outcomes because there has not been a large head-to-head prospective randomized clinical trial. This project will supply the data necessary to critically compare the two anesthetics.